Shards: Broken
by KhamanV
Summary: A new series of stand-alone stories, featuring new perspectives on and of Benjamin Linus. Spoilers for S6. In the third tale: Before visiting Sayid in Moscow, Ben takes a tour of Chernobyl's legacy and finds more than one parallel with his own history.
1. Innocence Bleeding

_**Shards: Broken**_

_Innocence Bleeding_

"_Man is disturbed not by things, but by the views he takes of them." ~ Epictetus_

The sun rides high and blind in a midday sky, dumb and uncaring of the worlds in its charge. Unseeing of the Earth. Unseeing of the island. Deep beneath the sky and the trees and the loam rests cold, carved stone, untouched at this hour by the light. Candles flicker instead, casting long shadows along Richard's long face where he sits with his back to ancient pillars bearing their carved implorations to gods lost in confused time. His arms are crossed against him and he feels a chill despite the island heat. A thin, reedy voice – the voice of a child with years yet before he's a cold-eyed man – rises behind him. A crack in the sound as it spirals to find no grasp against a slab ceiling.

It is screaming.

_No, _Richard thinks to himself, his mouth flexing with all the protests he won't utter. _That's a shriek._ The difference lies in the amount of fear versus pain, and there is so much fear in the crying voice. Richard's seen the ritual many times and heard many screams, though for all his experience with it, he still can't sense in the sound and the tortured flesh what the Master can – sense the infection. It all just sounds like tears and hurt to him.

Now he seldom remains in the chambers during the rite.

He has no idea if the boy is passing the man's test. He has hope; faith, even, that the boy will come through the other side of this dark moment, but he doesn't know. It's rare to bring a child like this, but so too are the circumstances, and Richard has a flicker of worry. _I let the woman decide for him. He couldn't choose. We chose. _He shifts against the carved stone. _How could he? He was dying._

_ This is still not his free will._

Not for a second did Richard doubt Jacob's decisions, but he could doubt his own. Frequently. As Widmore's brashness grows and the distance between him and Eloise expands, Richard doubts. As Dharma's continued presence pushes against their boundaries and the strange dark beast in the jungle grew more agitated by this imbalance, Richard doubts. In more meditative times, he might even admit to a fear.

But not a fear to match the wails that rise to him through dim doorways and flickering flames. The little voice is growing hoarse, exhaustion creeping in. _He's got to be nearly done in there. The boy can't take much more than that. _Richard feels a little ill, the human's instinctive response to a child's torment. He tries to ignore it – failing – believing in the rightness of the ritual. Believing it keeps everyone safe.

_Right? Right. _He reasserts this as a truth and feels a bit calmer for it.

A shadow passes by, one of the women with a load of blood-stained cloth for washing. She never looks up at the sound of a boy's fear, and her face is serene. She believes with her whole heart. She has no doubts within her at all, a gift of faith found easier in a more transient life. Richard watches her for a moment, unsettled once again, thoughts turned to the years he's lived and the years he's left to live. Will he, with the knowledge of ages, always be the one to carry Jacob's doubts for him? He's afraid so, the burden left to him to bear. His gift, his duty. He refuses to call it a curse.

One more wail, one that fades into a softer cry and Richard knows, instinctively, that the ritual is over. Relief passes through him – whatever fate the temple's master claims for young Ben, at least the pain is over – and he sinks a little into himself. Gooseflesh and sweat pops along his tanned, dark arms, the release of an hour's worry and more.

_I told them the boy wouldn't remember any of this. I hope I told them the truth._

Richard comes out of his thoughts and gets to his feet as the temple master steps into the room and flicks a hand to him, beckoning. He pauses, wanting to be prepared for what will greet him. He tries to keep his voice stable and neutral. "Is he clean? Will he survive?"

The master looks at him for a long moment, then nods once. He beckons again, even as the gooseflesh prickles once more along Richard's arms. It is time for the boy to rest.

~*~

Evening draws closer now, the sun settling into orange fire in the sky, and Richard watches over the pale child. From time to time others come to him to ask a question and then slip away again, satisfied or troubled or puzzled with what he has to give for advice. Few ask after the boy. He's not quite yet one of them. He's still an unknown, but their manners are mild and they leave also juice and bread for the child should he be hungry later.

The boy's skin is nearly translucent with sweat and weakness and the loss of blood and the bindings across the chest blaze white like a brand. Richard knows what lies underneath, a gunshot knitting itself together into fresh flesh, a gnarled memory of what should be a forgotten thing.

The boy twists in his sleep now and again, restless and silent otherwise.

He wakes once, the twitching body going still as the conscious mind takes over. The eyes flutter open – bright, bright blue of youth – and fixes on Richard's dark ones. They're clear, but not quite seeing, and they begin to flicker again after a moment, confused. Lost. Richard hesitates, then puts a hand on the boy's cold arm in an attempt to comfort. "You're all right, Benjamin. You're with friends."

The eyes fix on him again, sharpen, stare. For a moment, Richard believes he sees every memory of recent pain flit through the blueness – _but that can't be true. Right? _- and forces his face into a gentle smile.

The boy's lips part and a cracked, husky sound emerges. "I had a nightmare."

"So you did. It's over now."

The pale little brow creases. "No it isn't," he whispers, and he clenches his eyes closed. A minute later, the face releases and the boy falls back into troubled sleep.

Richard continues to sit with the boy, thankful he's asleep again so quickly. He is without advice for the first time. He has no answers, no response. Instead, he tries to console himself with faith.

_I trust you, Jacob. Let all this be in the service of the right path._

There's nothing else left to say.

_~fin_


	2. Slow Spider

_Slow Spider_

_I myself belong to the causes of eternal recurrence. ~ From 'Also Sprach Zarathustra'_

The janitor of any school facility occupies only one of two places in a child's mind – one of absent derision or one of intent interest. In the new hire's experience, it was the former that happened with greater frequency. He accepted that with serenity enough, even some gratitude, and the crumbling stone facade of the Portland grade school welcomed him with cool grace.

He smelled of sawdust and mud and that thick odor of industrial cleaner that marks every such institution. His blond hair was just at the edge of too long for the job, straw blond and unkempt and brushing the back of the navy jumpsuit. The tall-haired hens in the office watched him close over this, waiting for a filthy ex-hippie to come bounding out of the quiet, polite man they'd hired. It wouldn't happen, and in time even their eyes began to slide over him without more than a casual regard. They didn't notice when he was there, and they forgot when he wasn't. The paychecks ended in a dead letter drop, the address he'd given them legitimate enough for his purposes but he certainly didn't live there. No one bothered to check.

The teachers regarded him as a mobile disturbance, flitting through rooms at intervals throughout the day to tend the bins and the remnants of sick children and clean the windows. The students were kept rigidly in line, and most of them spared him no glance during these rounds. The janitor watched them instead. Most of them meant little to him and he made sure not to brush against them or do anything to catch their notice. But he kept an eye on the pale little boy with heavy eyes in a too-withdrawn face and the glasses that were more tape than steel. He never came to class with bruises on his face, but sometimes he limped, or favored a leg, or dirt marked the trails of old tears on his face.

Not all these marks were from home, the janitor noted. Children have an eye for the weak one in the pack, the primal smell of the alpha and the beta and the lesser. Most disregarded the boy. A few preyed on him. More than once, the janitor watched the little boy try to keep to his corners and read books – fables and fantasies with words bigger than his young mind had been trained for – only to be advanced on, surrounded, and left in mud and grime. The child took it with stoic shoulders, but the face looked wounded and lost. He, as ever, looked no one in the eye or reached for help.

_No peace for this child, _the janitor thought to himself when he saw these events occur. He never interfered; it wasn't his place. Never reached out a hand to stop. Nor did the teachers, and he spared a little private admonishment for them. For him, it was no hypocrisy. Just the circumstances of his life.

~*~

The janitor was there for the worst of it, the end of one such private schoolyard battle. Four larger boys, including one from a later grade had smelled tender meat and caught up to the blue-eyed child on the way out from a day's learning. They surrounded him, four corners of an unbreakable square, and shoved him back and forth among them. They chanted, wild cry - _"Medicine ball! Medicine ball!" _and ignored the sobbed pleas for them to stop. A teacher moved across the doorway and then disappeared back into the building. It wasn't ignorance of abuse, just the weary acknowledgement of the feral pecking order of children. To stop this now would mean worse for the victim later.

The janitor saw the final shove, the child pushed and left to fall against stone column and into a thin puddle of rain-filled dirt. The glasses flew, bent nearly beyond recognition, and something landed square in the morass with a wet thump. At this, the boy began to cry, a harsh, angry bray. The start of bitter hate.

This was more than the janitor could take, even as it was one of the things he was there to observe, and he put down his old mop and rags and went to collect the glasses from where they lay. The boy didn't look at him, fumbling instead at the mud.

At some point, the boy had replaced the tape-worn pair with a newer set of thin bronze. Now the left side of the glasses had pulled up at an unnatural angle, normally a death knell for the clunky spectacles of the era. A blessing that they weren't still heavy plastic. With a moment's thought and some careful pinching, the janitor was able to coax them back into shape with only the barest hint of a bend still visible. His work went unnoticed as the boy still hitched a heavy sob. Something had been pulled out of the mire into his lap.

A book. Of course it was a book. A nearly ruined one now, but still. "Which one?" The question, directed at a book rather than the circumstances, broke through the boy's private wall and brought the dirty face up to regard him with something like startlement.

"S-s-saki." A hiccup. A pale little hand pushed mud from the cover, revealing the blue and red blocks that made up the title and author. A short story collection.

The janitor nodded and reached out, very carefully, with the glasses dangling from the tips of his fingers. "Trade you." With hesitation, the thin fingers darted out and plucked the bronze glasses from him. No contact. The janitor relaxed a little and took the filthy book when it was pushed towards him. "Read _Sredni Vashtar?_ The one with the orphan boy and his little made-up god?"

A sniffle. "Not yet." Another hiccup. "I just started. _Tobermory."_

"That one was okay, but I think you'll really get a kick out of the one I mentioned."

"Why?"

"Figure it out when you get there."

The eyes dropped. "I'm not going to. It's ruined." The thin chest heaved. The janitor knew it as a sign the tears were going to return in a big and unstoppable way and put a hand up as if to try and stop it.

"Hold on there. Nothing's irreversible."

_"Look at it!" _The janitor fixed the boy with a look, quieting his outburst. Another little internal tremor of sympathy. _Probably saved up for this. Maybe set aside lunch money. Maybe stole from the dad._

"I mean what I say, kid. It's not that bad. I can't make it perfect, make it like it was. Doesn't work like that. There's always going to be some stains, it's gonna look pretty rough. But if you can trust me over the weekend, I'll see what I can do. I can make it readable, at the very least. You'll get your stories finished. Okay?" He tilted his head to catch the boy's look again. "We got a deal?"

"Okay, mister." The boy didn't sound pleased, rather defeated.

"Yeah, I know. You'd rather have a do-over on the day."

"I'd rather be _dead._" It came out in a defenseless snarl. That startled the janitor, a colder sort of self-loathing growing obvious. The boy swallowed, burying the outburst in a blank, dirty face, but the words still hung there, heavy. "What's your name?"

The janitor paused for a moment before answering. It would make his presence in the boy's life final, even if he never touched him. There was a doubt, but sympathy overrode it. "Call me Jake, kid."

"I'm Ben."

"Yep. I know." That got him a look, but he didn't return it. Instead, he thumbed around the book in his hand. It wasn't so bad as he'd thought at all. Just a filthy cover and edges. The inside was still just fine. "I'll find you, kid. Just have a little faith."

~*~

It took three hours of careful wiping and drying, and the book's white cover would forever be a kind of blotchy tan with the little Modern Library logo nearly obliterated, but it was a pretty good job for all that. Jacob had the patience for it, even the time, and he worked over each individual page with the solemnity due to a dead man's lasting words. Now and again he imagined he could hear the dry laugh of his old friend – or enemy, same difference – in the back of his mind. As he no doubt would, should it be learned the effort Jacob spent on a tiny piece of child's solace, doomed to be easily forgotten. He was supposed to be only watching.

~*~

He left the book on the boy's desk at the start of class on Monday. The act went unnoticed by everyone else, but the blue eyes widened up at him, shocked and surprised. This time there was a faint and fading bruise at the back of the jaw and Jacob did his best not to dwell on it. _Didn't think he'd get the book back. Poor, faithless little exile. You're always going to be like this, aren't you?_

"Thank you," Ben whispered, and that was a mild surprise. Jacob didn't think he'd take the risk of getting attention, or of showing more gratitude than he had to. It wouldn't have hurt his feelings; by now he understood the boy's position better than he'd intended to. Not for the first time, Jacob took a second to permit a little regret at destiny's weaving.

"Welcome," he mouthed back, and then he moved on to get the second trash bin out of the room.

~*~

Days passed on, and the boy's sharp gaze caught him frequently at work in the halls between classes. Absent derision, and intent scrutiny. _He'll still forget,_ Jacob thought to himself and nodded back with a mild expression each time. Once he looked up from meditative, studious sweeping, the rustling bristle-brush falling still at his side to see Ben watching him from the far end of an empty hall.

"Need to get home, kid. Building's closed."

"Why are you sweeping like that?" The boy shifted his weight from side to side. "Fancy looking."

Jacob straightened up, letting bones and muscles pop in his back. "Ever seen a Buddhist monk?"

"No." That perked his interest and the pale round face tilted to the side to watch him.

"Sweeping's something they do a lot of. Turning chaos into something safe while not disturbing the universe. Tricky stuff. You lose yourself, like fresh water, and just go with it. No self, no dirt, no chaos. It keeps you peaceful." He looked down at dirty thumbs. "And humble, come to think."

"It just looks like funny sweeping."

"Sometimes, kid, you just gotta go with the flow and look a little deeper. Not everyone does things for reasons on the surface." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Get lost, kid. Principal's up the next floor and she'll catch you in here and we'll both get it." That part was not quite true, but it got the boy moving.

~*~

Ben's appearance became more sporadic. He wasn't in danger, Jacob instinctually knew that. Knew the lay of fate, even if he wasn't meddling directly. Something was happening, though. He could see the weave well enough to know that. He had a suspicion about what.

_All I have to do to change my mind is a little tap on the shoulder. Easy as that._ Free will was free will, but sometimes a little nudge helped things along. He couldn't quite bring himself to it. The boy's destiny, whether he liked it or not, was his own at the core. The father's path was set. Jacob knew where the roads could end, had accepted that when the child was born and took his place in fate's possibilities.

It was a Thursday, fine and bright and colored with fall when Jacob saw Ben again. It was well after the bell and the boy should be in class but instead there he sat, ragged shoes and a book clutched tight on the top steps of the school. Jacob nodded to himself and drifted close, out of reach. He marked his presence with a clank of the ragged mop he carried. "You're late for class."

"Not going," came a toneless reply. "Dad took me out."

"Oh?" He leaned on the mop, looked down at the dark mop of hair.

"Guess I'm going to go somewhere else. He got a new job." Monotone. Like a death sentence.

"It might not be so bad, kid. Maybe you'll make some friends there."

Dead silence. The boy's fingers flexed against the book's cover. Finally the face turned up to him. "I read that story."

"Yeah? What did you think?"

"What happened to Conradin?"

"Well, he had a chance to make his own fate after that, I figure. He got what he wished for, though maybe not in the way he expected."

"Does that make magic real if you wish really, really hard?"

"I don't know if that was magic, Ben, what happened to his guardian."

"I wish Sredni Vashtar would kill _my _dad. Even if it was just a polecat." The last was muttered, a little embarrassed.

"Don't wish for that. Dark wishes go down dark roads. Prophecies and wishes have a way of fulfilling themselves." Jacob kept his tone neutral.

"I gotta go, anyway." The boy struggled to his feet and looked up at the man.

"Yes, you do." Jacob kept his hands firmly clasped around the handle of the mop. "See you in another life, kid."

"Do we ever get another one?" There was a note of innocent hope in the boy's voice that could break a softer heart. Jacob kept his own locked tight and gave him a wry smile instead of an answer. The boy inspected the expression for a moment and nodded. The hope went away. "I didn't think so. We're all trapped." He shrugged. "Bye, Jake."

He hesitated a moment and then looked after the boy as he reached the ground. He let the whisper catch on drifting air, unheard. "I forgive you." Ben paused for a moment, as if he'd heard anyway, and then kept on going.

Jacob watched the thin shoulders disappear into the distance. Untouched. Alone. _And I'm sorry. But you and I have a job to do._

_ I'll see you in the shadow of the statue._

Jacob let the mop fall from his hand, and then he wandered away.

~_Fin_


	3. Zone of Alienation

_Zone of Alienation_

"_Are you awake?" ~ The Stalker  
_

_October, 2007_

The sparrows are piebald in the Prypiat woods, the color leaching from them as they adapted and lived on in a world that Benjamin Linus might call 'After.' He was familiar with Afters – after a death, after a rebirth, after an exile, and he had theories about the philosophy behind this thin veil between halves of a life, but he kept his thoughts to himself. The sparrows would not have cared, anyway, and he spoke little to the others in the tour group. His own questions to the Kiev tour guide were rare and pointed, punctuating the ghostly silence with a crisp, clinical voice that kept the now-withdrawn and muted others at a distance from him. He didn't mind. He was used to solitude.

There are places in the world where ghosts are burned into the earth itself. Benjamin knew this as a truth, not a matter of faith or of science, but as a simple fact of long experience. The crackling, red-barked forest held thousands of them, a phantasmic weight lingering in between still-radioactive trees and lurking within the falling buildings of the abandoned town. His questions told him little about what life had been like for the people in the dead places. The guide was disinterested, not rudely so, in the topic. It was all Before.

He had read the books, seen the photos, but reality is always something different. Something more, and so he came to see for himself in the weeks before he would have to make a meeting in the Russian capital. There was a contrast in The Zone, a fact of its basic nature – while desolate, it also thrived. Life was present in the soil and the trees even as the little radiation meter the guide relied on tick-ticked away and the early morning arrival let the group catch sight of a small faction of feral Przewalski's horse that fled when they came too close. Man still carried the infection of Chernobyl, but nature carried on. Ben knew their stories and images, as well. It was familiar in some grim way.

~*~

As the afternoon approached and the group grew weary with the sprawling sense of human emptiness and threat, the guide, Anton Somoilov, seemed to pause and consider. The normally garrulous soul with his profane grasp of English sounded confidential. "I will show you something a little rare, I think. Not many groups come this way, but you, particularly you over there with your questions on history -" and at this the man jutted his chin at Ben. "Might get something out of it."

The guide led them to the north end of Prypiat, where the encroaching forest grew thicker yet. They struggled a bit past the broken borders of microdistricts and came to a place where the green was almost a solid wall. One of the other tourists griped a bit on the narrowest bit of path, but the guide ignored her and the others shot her a look to be quiet. There seemed to be nothing more.

"Just beyond those trees. See nothing from here, yes? Hides in spring and fall. Can come here many times and never find it, but in winter, easier. Come, follow me – the forgotten dead are here for your questions." A brief, bellowed laugh and the guide helped them push through into a brush of forest.

Small monuments jutted up from autumn orange leaves and loam. A thick pillar of bronze, some old, untended crosses. The meter in the guide's pocket continued to tick steadily. No cause yet for alarm, but the earth ran hot. Too hot for the long term, but the guide would let them linger for only brief moments. "These are the dead of Semihody. Built Prypiat around them, men got on with their lives with death already living close to them. Not Prypiat cemetary, that is south. Close to the reactor, we won't go there." Another laugh. "But here, yes, the dead wait. Wonder, probably, why we brought this thing, this nightmare to them while they rest. Unhappy dead. The accident purged everyone alive and left the forgotten to tick-tick in the cold. Poor bastards."

_Purge. _A tremor of ice and gooseflesh ran along Benjamin's skin at the word, though his face hid his thoughts.

"Any questions for them, then? No, gone all silent?" The guide looked at him with a wry smile. Ben glanced up at Anton, then glanced away again, trailing his gaze over worn Cyrillic. Names and dates. Nothing he could read. "Ah, they have no answers anyway. But at least now some more will remember that they were here. A little gift. For them, not us."

One of the others, a young college student, blurted out a question built on all the sights of the day. It sounded like a small wail. "Why did this have to happen?"

The guide gave a derisive snort, looked to Ben as if sensing understanding before he answered. "Shit happens. It's the world. Destiny's a whore and the bitch always rolls house number. Sooner or later bad things happen. We learn, maybe even survive. We move on. But mostly shit happens. And I stick around to tell you about this shit so maybe you know some of the shit the world's got in store for the future." He shrugged. "Next you ask me – oh, but the reactor is bad, yes? Down with the nuclear goblin! Never another Chernobyl! Pfah. Different topic entire. Don't talk to me about that, I have no opinion. None I share. But look around you, yes, look around. You see this forest? You smell this earth?"

Anton bared his teeth in a grin before responding to his own questions. "It's alive. Doesn't matter what the fuck-all we do and what the earth does to us, this place is alive and will judge us and then forget us when we're gone. Forget us. Is just ego. The place remains. Ah, you don't get it and now I get in trouble. Come. I get us back to Kiev before the evening. No more such questions, eh? I might answer."

~*~

They were approaching the vehicle when the sounds started. The guide held out a hand to the others to stop and stay near without wandering. A distant hooting, the snap, the crackle of men tromping through wilderness on rough trail. Voices of thick Russian carried close, then stilled and rose again when they had gained more distance.

"Another tour group?" The college student looked at the guide, whose face was tight.

"_Nyet. _ _Samosely._ Probably armed. Bear in the woods, saw tracks last tour." The guide opened his mouth, then closed it again, pinched his face as if uncomfortable. "They are like squatters. Children of the forgot. Of before. Slip past the checkpoint to get in. Want the right to stay." He muttered the next to himself. "I will have to inform at Dytyatky. Drove same band out last week, I think."

"Wait – they try to _live _here? They sneak in to get _here_?" Outright shock on the young face. Ben regarded it with a mild expression. "I don't understand, that makes no sense."

The guide turned back towards the vehicle, gestured for the rest to follow. He asked the question over his shoulder. "What makes no sense?"

"Why in God's name would they fight to come back to a place like this?"

It was Ben that answered, the words slipping away from him with unintended truth.

"It's their home."

_~fin_


End file.
